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Jiminez succumbs to cancer

Posted September 5, 2001; 05:17 p.m.

by lauren

Funeral services were held on Sept. 5 for Michael Francis Jiminez, a distinguished scholar of Latin America who specialized in the history of Colombia. Known for his inspiring classroom lectures as well as for his scholarly articles and dedicated community service, Jiminez had been battling kidney cancer for nearly a year and died on Sept. 1.

Most recently a member of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, Jiminez taught at Princeton University from 1985 to 1993 and was a Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York in the early 1990s. Widely known for his interpretations of 19th and 20th century Colombian history, Jiminez also published several influential essays on the history of Latin American generally. His major work, a book entitled "Struggles on an Interior Shore," will be published posthumously by Duke University Press.

Considered an extraordinary teacher by students and peers alike, Jiminez won the Presidential Teaching Award at Princeton and always attracted hundreds of his students to his popular course on Latin America.

Jiminez was actively involved in national debates on the teaching of history, serving as an advisor for the National History Standards. While at Princeton, he also formed close ties with the local community, and worked in particular to promote better race relations as the chair of the Princeton Borough Civil Rights Commission.

Born in 1948 in Merced, Calif., he spent most of his childhood in Bogota, Colombia. He was a graduate of Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., Trinity College in Connecticut, Stanford University, and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1985. Jiminez was also the recipient of several honors including New Jersey Governors Fellowship, the David Rike Preceptorship at Princeton, a Whiting Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship.

His survivors include his wife, Lynn Marie Sanborne, and his three children, Christina, 24, of Brooklyn, N.Y., David, 8, and Eliza Rose, 5, of Pittsburgh. A memorial service at Princeton University is expected to take place in June, 2002.